


Silhouettes

by scary_crow



Category: Naruto
Genre: Abuse of Parentheticals, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Mentions of Mental Illness, Obito swears a lot, That is all, descriptions of underage sex because Obito has a VIVID imagination, probs gonna write some smut so, yes it'll be happy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-27 09:09:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20757893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scary_crow/pseuds/scary_crow
Summary: Obito lives. Kakashi is stuck with him, at least until he isn't. Post war fix-it. Obito's POV.





	Silhouettes

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first KakaObi fic, so you're welcome for the hella unoriginal theme. Haven't been on AO3 in years but I've been relearning how to write and this is a fun outlet. I'm not amazingly well-versed in canon, so if there's anything I mess up, let me know or don't. Sometimes I make things up so ~suspend your disbelief~ once in a while. Peace.
> 
> [playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWkeegc9DiEQYhlufK6YRQmFtWJQjshpT)

Konoha is very quiet when Obito finally wakes up.

The first thing he sees is a familiar pair of eyes, one half open and still scarred. Then: a shock of silver hair, a smudge of blue, the grainy symbol of the Allied Forces. The first thing he feels is a stinging pain directly between his eyes, and for a moment he panics, wonders if the sealing had gone wrong somehow, but then those familiar eyes are squinting in something akin to a smile, and Obito groans and flinches away the next time Kakashi tries to flick him.

“Get off,” he manages, but his throat is dry and he chokes on his own saliva. The bed creaks, and vaguely he hears Kakashi say the words _water _and _nightstand_, and when he opens his eyes again the room is empty.

_Ass._

There isn’t a blanket on the bed, only sheets, which Obito doesn’t mind because he runs warm and even now his back feels damp against the fabric. He takes in his surroundings as best he can without straining his neck too badly. It isn’t much: the walls are beige and other than the bed and the table next to it, the only feature in the room is a terrarium against the far wall. The plants inside it look mostly dead. Unbelievable. Kakashi can’t take care of his fucking self, much less a bucket full of plants.

He wants to reach for the water, but he can’t quite move his arm, can’t quite sit up. Something on his chest feels impossibly heavy, like he’s weighted down against the mattress. He hauls air into his lungs, using practically all of the energy he’s still permitted to access. It takes him multiple shuddery breaths just to lift his chin.

He doesn’t see much before dropping his head back to the pillow, but he sees enough. It’s huge, the seal. Not black exactly, but a dark, bruising purple, and it branches out like vines over both halves of his chest, the right side only slightly fainter than the left. It worked, then. It definitely worked. He can still feel the chakra they’ve isolated rumbling somewhere distant, warm as the earth, but it’s far out of his reach. _Fuck_, life is going to be weird without Kamui. And other things. He’s wants to know what they left him with, what he’s still capable of accessing. It doesn’t feel like much, he acknowledges, and it’s accompanied by a twinge of sadness.

He tries to move his arm again and manages, but reaching out sends a torrid jolt of pain through his chest and right shoulder. Somehow it’s Kakashi’s fault: Obito can’t reach the damn glass of water he left him, but they both know that if Kakashi tries to help him drink it, he’ll put a fist through that pasty bastard’s stomach. At least he’ll try. Gritting his teeth—because like hell is Kakashi going to hear him suffer _(Remotely, he realizes he’s been asleep for who knows how long, and _somebody _must have been stuck with the job of keeping him alive, which means dignity at this point is leagues away_._)_—he lunges sideways at the bedside table and proceeds to knock both the glass of water and a small lamp onto the floor. The room goes dark. Konoha is very, very quiet.

Obito lets the rest of his unresponsive body _thump_ to the carpeted floor.

Minutes later, and before Obito has entirely acclimated to the feeling of every single one of his nerve endings firing _pure fucking_ _agony_ in the direction of his brain, he hears the door creak open, the soft sound of bare feet on the carpet, another, much less erratic, pair of lungs breathing in the small room. He closes his eyes and tries to Kamui the fuck away from here, but no they didn’t leave him with that particular ability and even if they had, his body would be too drained right now to withstand the shift. Behind his eyes, his head throbs. Not being dead hurts like hell. Life is a lousy bargain.

“Get up,” Kakashi says gruffly. He voice is hoarse; he sounds tired. That’s what he gets for volunteering hospice services.

Obito rolls his eyes, immediately regretting the action. “I can’t, asshole,” he spits. He sees Kakashi’s jaw move beneath the mask, but other than that, nothing.

It’s quiet after that, for a little while. He focuses on the _whoosh_ of the ceiling fan, the way his breath feels like it’s just barely scraping past his ribs on every inhale, the cold spilt water soaking the skin of his back. He’s been through worse, which is not a comforting thought, but his mind supplies it anyway. Unbidden, memories appear out of order: the Jūbi, the moon, Kakashi’s fist through his heart _(_using_ him, same as Rin, he realizes, hypocritical, desperate, still—always, always—indignant)_, Kakashi fighting alongside him, his own body letting go _(Rin)_, and then Naruto _(Minato’s son, his _son_)_, and suddenly he was in Konoha again, in the morning, in the summer. His mind wavers between relief and massive disappointment. 

What are they going to do with him?

Even if he’s pardoned _(which, he won’t be, but even if he is)_, he’s superfluous, a vestige from an earlier time. He’s hardly a shinobi anymore, and he’s only been half a man for years now. Even if they find a way to use him, and even if he agrees_ (he won't)_, he just . . . won’t be any good. Maybe he can disappoint the Village Hidden in the Leaves one last time. Might even be fun.

He does his best not to look at Kakashi standing a few steps away, but can’t miss the long sigh the man makes when he finally leans down and over him.

“You look like you’re having a panic attack,” he says, and—more gently than Obito expects—slides an arm beneath his shoulders and under his armpit. “Sit up at least, c’mon.”

Obito obliges, although he makes sure to broadcast his displeasure. It still hurts, but now the pain is mostly confined to his chest and shoulders. The new pain, at least.

Kakashi helps him lean against the side of the bed. “You look terrible,” he offers.

“Fuck absolutely everything about you, Bakashi.”

Kakashi huffs out a small laugh. He’s not used to laughing, and Obito is not used to hearing him laugh. It sounds rancid and contrived.

“Get me some water,” Obito says, because his throat burns but also to get Kakashi to stop that horrible laughter. Kakashi hums and gets up, leaves the room for a second before returning with a second glass of water—room temperature—for Obito to swallow down. He squats in front of Obito, observing.

“You’ve been asleep four days,” he finally says, holding up the appropriate number of fingers. When Obito only winces, he continues. “You should thank Naruto. You should be dead.”

Obito grunts. He thinks he probably has more people than Naruto to thank. Thinks it could take a lifetime. He is absolutely terrible at penitence.

He wills his words to come out bitter, because anger is so much easier than despondency. “Sure, let me just Kamui over there now.”

Kakashi raises his eyebrows at that, but he actually looks a little amused. It’s less contrived than the laugh had been, and Obito had forgotten that they used to know each other as kids, that—despite the rivalry—Obito used to make jokes he knew Kakashi would like, and when Kakashi laughed at them Obito would feel something like pride swell in his chest. He isn’t a child anymore, but he feels it still. It’s accompanied almost immediately by nausea, a horrible twist like a kunai in his gut, because they hurt each other, and Obito is effectively incarcerated in _Konoha_, and Kakashi is going to be _Hokage_, and—for better or worse—he failed. He’s too old and battered to start again, so what’s there left to do?

He does, maybe, want to see the ocean.

If only so he can walk into it until the water rises over his head. 

“Have they decided anything?” he asks, only fifty percent sure he wants to hear the answer.

“Maa,” Kakashi starts, “not really. Naruto’s really badgering them. For now, you’re fine here as long as I’m here.”

“You’re my babysitter,” Obito says, the word bitter on his tongue.

Kakashi smiles another one of his revoltingly fake smiles and stands up. “Sasuke’s been pardoned. Not that he’s really, eh, on your level.”

Obito leans farther back against the bed and closes his eyes so that he doesn’t have to see Kakashi’s shitty, vapid eyes. He doesn’t really _want_ to be pardoned, doesn’t want to be another tool in Konoha’s tool belt, not after everything. _He had been a child._ But hey, at least they scratched his name onto the Memorial Stone.

Good memories still crop up every once in a while, although they’re mostly fragments. Rin’s smiles (_everything Kakashi’s weren’t_). Walking home to his grandmother’s late at night. The chūnin exams (_because as screwed up as they were—are—it felt so good to pass_). The training grounds. Kakashi, fast as lightning even back then, standing over him with his fist clutching at his collar and a kunai in his hand.

He can still feel the winter sun on his face, his hitai-ate lost somewhere in the middle of the fight_ (he had dodged a clone at the last second), _the grass cool and damp against his back, chest heaving with effort. He hadn’t awakened his Sharingan back then, and Kakashi was _good_, always so good, better than Obito at everything and a cocky little shit about it too. Obito had kicked a leg out to try to trip him, and Kakashi had been on his throat in a second.

_Stop it, idiot. You lost._

It wasn’t formal training. They were sparring. It was early morning in the middle of winter. Minato was probably still asleep.

_Again. I want to fight you again._

He had been so close to winning that time. If he just moved a little more quickly.

_I’m tired of fighting you. It’s_ boring. He let go of Obito’s collar, sitting over his legs and looking down at Obito, young and impatient and . . . _teasing_, Obito remembers realizing, _he’s teasing me_.

Obito remembers the way he felt his blood burn at those words, at Kakashi’s dismissive tone, his drawn-out sigh; he remembers too the way his anger dissipated when he realized Kakashi was goading him, not because he was bored but because he wanted Obito to _fight_.

The sky was pink at all its edges. Rin would wake up in a few hours and complain that they hadn’t invited her to spar with them. But this was their time, silent save the wind and occasional crow overhead, breaths heavy and so _loud_ in Obito’s ears, Kakashi’s hair glinting silver in the first beams of sunlight, the slight widening of his eyes _(because Obito had learned to read him like a book)_, the _thud _of his back the first time Obito beat him in a fight, the grass tickling his shins.

_I win,_ he remembers grinning. He had a cut across his shoulder where Kakashi had nicked him with a shuriken, but he had _won_.

_Get _off_ me,_ Kakashi had grunted and shoved him, hard.

Obito had stayed there in the grass on his back, breathing hard, until Kakashi’s footsteps were long gone.

Everything was winter but nothing was cold.

His chest hurts something awful, and when he opens his eyes Kakashi is still standing in front of him, eyebrows raised and arms crossed. Amused.

On the other side of the room, above the terrarium, is a single window, crooked blinds letting slices of moonlight through and onto the carpet.

“Bathroom,” Obito says.

“Up, then.” Kakashi leans down again to wrap an arm under Obito’s shoulders. It’s just as gentle as it was the first time, but Obito still grits his teeth and groans on the way up, leaning heavily against Kakashi’s side until he feels he can stand on his own. 

“That bad?” Kakashi glances for a moment at his chest.

“_Yess,_” Obito hisses, looking around for a shirt. He’s wearing a pair of Kakashi’s sweatpants, grey and soft and a couple inches too short on him.

Kakashi finds him a shirt, also too small on him _(but just barely)_, and releases his hold on Obito so Obito can pull it over his head. The motion hurts, but it’s getting easier to move, and it actually feels nice to be standing after so long in bed.

“Toothbrush in the cabinet,” Kakashi says on his way out, looking Obito over as if he’s unsure the man is capable of going to the bathroom on his own. Finally, he crinkles his eyes and turns to leave. “Don’t trip and kill yourself. After all my hard work.” Obito glares after him.

In the bathroom, he takes a piss and brushes his teeth, splashes water on his face and avoids his reflection before stumbling back through the bedroom. He waits inside the doorframe, Kakashi making noise in what sounds like the kitchen, humming a song Obito hasn’t heard.

He’s hungry, but he doesn’t know how to ask for it. He knows that he’s lousy with emotions and that when it comes to Kakashi, his initial knee-jerk reaction will always be anger, but Kakashi is also the last remnant of a past he spent the last half of his life trying to recover. _What if it always hurts to look at him?_ He startles. He still wants to go back, even after everything. He wishes he could draw the desire out of his blood like poison.

Oh.

In the kitchen, there’s miso waiting, and rice. And horribly misshapen tomagoyaki. Breakfast. Or dinner—Obito doesn’t know what time it is. He barks out a laugh. His face burns red, and something repulsive climbs its way into his throat. It’s the same feeling as earlier: the kunai in his gut. He knows he needs people in his corner right now, but he _hates_ that it’s Kakashi. Kakashi, who has apparently been looking after him for _four days_, who left water by his bedside and made sure he didn’t die in his fucking sleep, who practically carried him into the bathroom and who _made him breakfast_. If Obito had the energy or capacity, he would punch him just to do something other than look at him. And it’s that too, isn’t it? He would never beat Kakashi in a sparring match again, would never even be a formidable opponent.

“What?” Kakashi is squinting at him now with something close to genuine concern, and it makes Obito want to vomit.

“Nevermind,” Obito spits, defensive by reflex. He ducks his head and it _hurts_. He can’t look at Kakashi’s face right now. He doesn’t want to be pitied, but more than that, he doesn’t want to deal with what _genuine concern_ looks like on Kakashi. Neither of them are good with this, with _aftercare_. They learned how to slit someone’s throat or beat someone bloody, they know how to put holes in each other’s bodies, but they aren’t medic-nin and beyond basic field aid_ (which mostly consists of not dying long enough to get to an _actual_ medic-nin)_, they don’t know how to patch things up. Obito runs on anger and desperation, Kakashi on apathy and loneliness and enough shame for the both of them; none of those things are conducive of reconciliation.

He remembers Kakashi’s face as he raved like a fucking zealot, massive bleeding hole in his chest. His face when he first saw behind Tobi’s mask. Obito doesn’t know if he feels guilty—again, Kakashi bears enough of that for the both of them—but he thinks he should, if not for Kakashi then for the war in general, if not for the war then for the Uchihas _(at least for the children)_, if not for the Uchihas then for Minato, for Naruto, Sasuke, for Rin. Unnervingly, the guilt doesn’t come. At the end of the day, he’s fucking exhausted, and all he feels is used, and foolish, and very, very young.

Maybe a little righteous, even now.

He’s in his thirties, and he can’t really remember a time when anyone made him breakfast.

“Fuck this, I’m going back to bed.”

Like he said, he isn’t any good at this.

Kakashi lets out an exasperated sigh and crosses the room before Obito can even manage to take a single step. He feels a feather light touch on his arm and his body jolts—he doesn’t mean to; it feels like electricity. Kakashi’s eyebrows scrunch together at that; his arm drops back to his side. Obito can see his fingers twitch slightly; he doesn’t know what it means that Kakashi wants to be close to him.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Kakashi says, waving a hand between them, ambiguous as always. There are crinkles by his eyes, and Obito wonders if they’re from laughing. He feels faintly self-conscious now that Kakashi has seen all his scarring so closely. Even in a long-sleeved shirt and sweatpants, the right side of his face and neck are still visible, mangled, skin pulled taut in all the wrong places, drooping in others. But Kakashi is looking at him quietly, laugh-lines just barely there, and Obito is a little boy all over again, not on the sparring fields this time but in his grandmother’s house leaning over the kotatsu as Kakashi tries and fails to teach him the rules of shogi. They hadn’t quite been friends, but they had been close.

“Kakashi.” He feels his anger deflate but, in its absence, he’s left with disorientation.

He doesn’t know how to do this either.

Kakashi must notice something different in his expression, because he reaches out again, fingers catching at Obito’s elbow, and tilts his head incrementally to one side. “Hmm?”

“I don’t know how to do this either.” There. He said it. It’s out. The nauseous feeling returns and he quashes it down as best as he can.

Kakashi’s eyes seem a warmer grey than usual. He doesn’t move, just squeezes Obito’s elbow and hums in agreement. Obito knows Kakashi is trying to decipher his thoughts and he lets him try, stares back at him and stays quiet for a minute. Neither of them are as easy to read as they used to be, especially not Kakashi, who has always been unobtrusive and more or less dispirited except when he needed to be.

The minute passes, and Kakashi’s arm drops again, but his fingers catch on the wrist of Obito’s shirt, just barely brushing the skin underneath it. It’s not his good arm, but it still_ feels_ all kinds of things Obito is not ready to name. He wonders distantly what Kakashi was like at fifteen, at sixteen, at seventeen. At twenty-two.

He clears his throat, but his voice still comes out sounding like gravel. “You never taught me shogi.”

Kakashi’s eyes widen at the overture, and he drops his hand, turning away. The sun is rising now, through the windows in the kitchen. Not dinner, then. Breakfast.

“Maa, I did try.” He’s rubbing the back of his neck, eyes betraying a sheepish smile.

“That you did,” Obito huffs. “Do you have a set?”

“Eat first,” Kakashi says. “Then sleep more. Then shogi.”

Kakashi is trying, in his own endlessly devoted but perpetually inept way, to take care of him. He can’t even take care of his fucking plants and he’s trying to take care of Obito. It’s regret, Obito knows—a torrent of misplaced shame that Kakashi’s eyes betray every time he looks at him; but they are both different people now, have been different people many times throughout their lives. What is one more husk to shed?

He tries to catch Kakashi’s eyes, but Kakashi is stepping through the sliding screen door into his small backyard, bag of dogfood on his hip, and Obito has free reign of the kitchen.

He barely eats anything, and is thankful Kakashi isn’t there to witness him heave his stomach contents _(virtually nothing)_ into the sink the first time he tries to keep the food down. On the second try, he manages some miso and a bit of rice. The tomagoyaki sits untouched.

This is his third chance, he guesses, thanks to Naruto, to Kakashi, to whoever else had a say in deciding _not_ to lop off his head. He’s been sure of himself before though, unwaveringly sure, and look at how that turned out.

On his way back to the bedroom, he glances at the shadow of Kakashi through the screen door.

It can’t be easy as all that: to look at what’s monstrous and forgive it.

Konoha is very quiet when Obito goes back to sleep.

━━━━━━━

“I don’t know. I’m sorry, Kakashi.” The voice is faint. It’s coming from the other side of the apartment, the front door. Obito stirs.

“He doesn’t want to be here.” Kakashi’s voice this time. “Are they taking that into account?”

_No,_ Obito thinks, _no, Kakashi, you sincere idiot, of course they aren’t._

Apparently innocence is a lot more difficult to eradicate than Obito thought.

“Do you need anything?”

“Maa, no, I just—keep me updated?”

The other man says something Obito can’t make out, and Kakashi chuckles. “I know him better than he thinks.”

It’s quiet for a moment, Obito straining to hear their mumbling, then, “Do you want to come in?”

“Oh no, it’s fine, thanks. I’ll send Naruto over later, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Take care, Kakashi.”

The door closes with a _click_.

Obito sits up, testing the movement of his body. The pain has improved exponentially; he feels almost back to normal, other than a dull and persistent ache that has spread from the right side of his body over his chest. He thinks he could manage a shower. First things first though: he braces himself for the headache of a lifetime and attempts to awaken his Sharingan.

It _works_. Not the Mangekyō, which will never be accessible to him again, but the Sharingan alone works. It doesn’t feel fully actualized, and he can’t reach deep enough into his chakra reserves to do much with it—definitely not any genjutsu—but he can see Kakashi’s chakra through the bedroom wall, an eddy of white light that follows him around lazily as he moves through the apartment. His head throbs, and Obito wonders if, like almost everything he does these days, it is going to hurt forever. He misses the full power of the Sharingan in a very visceral way, his entire body aware that _more _is just a hair’s breadth away and straining determinedly to reach it. He’s all patchwork these days, old scars and Senju’s cells, and now this monster of a seal snaking across his chest. At least he has both of his own eyes again. Not that he asked for it to end up this way—one of them had been a gift, after all. He uses said gift to follow Kakashi’s chakra as it drifts closer, the man appearing in the doorframe.

Kakashi blinks at him a couple of times, but he doesn’t look surprised. “Feel better?”

“You didn’t tell me I still had my Sharingan.”

“This hardly counts.”

“Goddamn bastard.”

He doesn’t know what to say after that. Kakashi doesn’t move from the doorframe, only watches him, face half obscured by the mask, like Obito is some sort of wild animal that nobody has quite figured out what to do with. He isn’t wrong; the village has enough on their hands that they shouldn’t have to deal with mass murderers who have complicated relationships with high-ranking shinobi. Slowly, Obito arranges his body into a sitting position, dropping his legs over the side of the bed. 

For the first time since activating his Sharingan, he senses other chakra signatures just outside their walls. He recognizes a couple of them. 

“So, uh, am I a prisoner here?” He rubs at his jaw, wants to ask Kakashi for a good clean knife so he can rake the stubble off. _Self-care._ Now that he’s not in excruciating pain and flirting with the idea of offing himself, it seems pertinent. Oh, the resilience of the human spirit. Even when he thinks of dying, he can’t keep himself from trying to live.

Kakashi crinkles his face; for better or worse, they know each other too well for delusions. “Ah, yeah, more or less.”

“ANBU, huh?”

“Just a precaution.” 

“An unnecessary one,” he mumbles, releasing his Sharingan. “Who was that at the door?”

“Tenzō.”

“It didn’t sound like he had any news.”

“Not really.” Kakashi scratches his cheek, then looks away, clearing his throat. “Naruto might come by sometime this week.”

“Okay.”

“He should know more.”

A silence passes between them again, but Kakashi still doesn’t leave. He’s not wearing his hitai-ate or flak jacket, just a dark blue sweatshirt with the symbol of Uzushiogakure sewn on each of the shoulders and a pair of loose pants. His arms are crossed, his hair less haphazard than usual. He looks _good_, Obito thinks. Tired, but good. It’s been a long time since he’s simply looked at Kakashi. 

When they were younger, he used to look at him all the time—watching, trying to imitate him, learn from him. He watched as Kakashi rose through the ranks, watched as he invented and then mastered Chidori, watched him when he finally became a jōnin only shortly after Obito had passed the chūnin exams. He watched him when they sparred, gangly and lean and still more graceful than Obito had ever been. In a heartbeat, his movements would shift from lazy and slow to deliberate and lightning-quick, hands forming jutsus faster than Obito could keep up with. 

He watched Kakashi when the cave collapsed, and when he realized, with the absolute clarity of someone who knows they are about to die, that he was going to miss the bastard. It was the only time he had seen Kakashi cry.

He thinks about Rin, who also watched Kakashi. Oh, he had been so close to having her. Now, instead, he’s stuck with a depressed masochist whose communication skills rival only Obito’s in inelegance. 

He does look good, though. Obito remembers being thirteen and thinking the same thing. Back then, when he touched himself, it was for more than economic reasons. Mostly he thought of Rin, sometimes he thought of other girls in his class _(though they always had brown hair)_; occasionally, the brunettes were replaced by course white hair that felt like straw in his hands _(he knows this because he’s tried to grab at it during more than one sparring match)_, and he wouldn’t be on top anymore. It never bothered him, because it was his imagination after all, but sometimes, when Kakashi looked at him the wrong _(right)_ way, when that Chidori lit up like the sun in the palm of his hand, or when an expertly-thrown kunai saved Obito’s ass at the very last instant, he felt a blush rise to his cheeks and an immense surge of pride replace the customary jealousy he experienced whenever Kakashi excelled at something.

They had been too young for sex, but they had also been too young for paternal suicide and cave ins and inadvertent murder, so Obito has no problem reimagining his teenage reveries. Kakashi would suck him off in the bathroom and Obito would come down his throat, Kakashi swallowing everything because he’s stuck up like that and probably thought spitting was a sign of weakness. _Shinobi don’t spit,_ Obito can almost hear him saying, and it makes him want to cackle like a lunatic. His favorite, though, was Kakashi just fucking him straight into the mattress, knees by his ears, all while mumbling into his ear that Obito was _doing so fucking good, yes._ Yeah, Obito probably had a praise kink when it came to Kakashi. Oh to be a teenager again. 

It’s likely, he knows, that it would have been a lot less practiced than in his expert daydreams. They probably would have had a clumsy first kiss, both of them clueless about what to do with their tongues. Kakashi would have pretended to know what he was doing, and Obito would have believed him, and been angry, and done everything he could to compete with Kakashi’s mouth and hands and legs. 

He doesn’t think Kakashi now even has the _energy_ to have sex. His stamina’s always been shitty, but now, except for in battles, he’s a walking somnolite. 

Maybe in another life.

“You’re staring.”

Obito shrugs. He was. “I haven’t seen you in years.” 

And there it is: the first plunge into the past. 

Kakashi, because he is Kakashi, ignores it. “Get up. We’re going shopping.”

Obito raises his eyebrows.

“You seem better today. And I need groceries if I’m going to feed you. Also, you need clothes. It’s either come with me or I can send some ANBU in here to”—he squints at Obito—“_babysit_ you.”

“Your clothes are fine,” Obito says. 

Kakashi hums. “I don’t want you in my clothes.”

Whatever that means.

Obito decides he needs to shower first, so he does.

_It’s not going to work, Bakashi_. He turns the handle on the faucet until the water is hot enough to burn. Shopping and new clothes. Kakashi is trying to continue what Naruto started, to maintain the tentative hope he had given Obito, and maybe, maybe, he’s going to save whatever patchwork fragments are left of him, but Obito doesn’t think so.

He does have hope again, or something similar to it, but it’s a slippery thing to hold onto. He still sees Kakashi as a painful part of his past but also the only part he has left. He’s frustrated with his body and with Konoha and with Kakashi, who would never speak a word against the village, even after everything. He _wants_ Kakashi to save him but he also wants him to take a fistful of his hair and crack his skull open against the wall. He could probably do it in one blow. Although, no use fantasizing. Neither of them know how to go about saving each other so it’s a moot point. 

_They were different people before,_ he reminds himself. _They can be different people again._

It feels unstable.

_(Because there are a million different ways this could have gone down. In parallel universes, there are a million different ways this _has_ gone down. Obito dies at Minato’s hand. Obito dies in the cave. Obito dies at the end of the war. Obito dies trying to Kamui out of a whorehouse after being stabbed in the stomach and gutted with a fishing knife. _

_Obito doesn’t die and Kakashi_ hates_ him for it.)_

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is [scary-crow](https://scary-crow.tumblr.com/), come roll in the hay with me


End file.
